Athens, a liberal college town, is home to a loose-knit group of dozens, if not hundreds, of socialists, anarchists and other activists on the far left. They say they're cautiously optimistic about an Obama presidency, but don't think he shares their views on broad issues like war and the economy.

"I would say categorically that Obama is not a socialist or a Marxist or even a progressive," said Ben Webster, an Athens librarian and self-described Marxist who voted for Obama.

Obama favors some longtime goals of the left, such as universal health care, green energy and investing in infrastructure, but also is a free-market capitalist who will maintain a huge military presence abroad, Webster said.

"He is still a supporter of what I see as a very unjust and exploitative economic system," Webster said.

Many leftists are concerned about Obama because he raised millions of dollars in campaign donations from Wall Street and is filling his cabinet with holdovers from the moderate Clinton era, Jonathan Robert said.

"That doesn't sound like change to me," said Robert, an Athens resident who calls himself a progressive social-justice activist.

Broun, an Athens Republican, raised the alarm about Obama two weeks ago, making national news by calling him a Marxist at a Rotary Club meeting in Augusta, then following up by telling the Associated Press he is worried Obama might turn the country into a Soviet-style dictatorship.

Obama famously told Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher that he wanted to "spread the wealth around," a comment Broun used to support his belief that Obama is a Marxist who supports "confiscatory tax and wealth redistribution schemes."

A tax hike for the rich or the government buying a stake in financial institutions are not socialism, said Milton Tambor, head of the Atlanta chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.

"It's kind of absurd, actually," he said. "The way it gets framed now, if you talk about progressive taxation, you're a socialist."

Tambor, a retired union organizer, defined socialism much the same way the 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx did, as workers owning the means of production. Marx envisioned a bottom-up revolution that would abolish private property and inheritances, operate collective farms and factories, ban child labor, give everyone a free public education and centralize banks, transportation and communications.

Obama's tax plan calls for repealing President Bush's tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 per year. Under his plan, Americans in the highest tax bracket would pay a 39.6 percent income tax. That hardly qualifies as socialist, said University of Georgia political science professor Markus Crepaz.

"All this talk about Marxism is ridiculous," Crepaz said. "I think it's very ill-informed, uneducated, sophomoric shooting from the hip."

Obama's tax policy will redistribute wealth, but so do popular entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the HOPE Scholarship, Crepaz said. Most countries have a progressive income tax system like the United States' where the wealthy pay a higher percentage of their income than the poor, he said.

"In democracies around the world, you see this sense of the more people make, the more they should pay," he said. "This builds a sense of community. We are all in this together."

Political rivals often challenge an opponent's patriotism - in 1992, George H.W. Bush questioned Clinton's Cold War visit to Moscow while a student at the University of Oxford - but politicians haven't thrown around words like Marxist and socialist since the 1930s, UGA political science profession Paul-Henri Gurian said.

"It struck me as unusual partly because Obama is not extremely liberal," he said of Broun's criticisms.

"His style is pretty moderate," Gurian said. "He's liberal, but he's a mainstream Democratic liberal. He's not any more liberal than other Democrats, and it looks like he's going to govern from the center, which is what successful presidents do."

Those moderate instincts are what make actual socialists wary.

"No one has a sense that Obama will bring about a progressive agenda without significant pressure being brought to bear," Tambor said.

At the same time, left-wing activists who were demoralized by President Bush's administration do see an opportunity to push the United States further toward Marxism under Obama, Webster said.

"The center is moving to the left, and that opens up more room for those of us at the margin of the left," he said.